Retreads. Crafting at it’s finest?

You look marvelous.  You look like me. 

So there I am.  In the Aldor Bank in Shattrath City.

I see a Draenei sporting some really cool looking shoulders.  I always see the Paladin version of the crafting plans in the Auction House that would craft those.  Dawnsteel Pauldrons or some such.  They look very regal with a large glowing gem in them.  Then, later, I saw a Warrior actually wearing them.  Huh?  On inspection I see the Warrior is wearing Swiftsteel Shoulders.  Same exact look as the Paladin version, other than color.  Now my Warrior has been waiting a long time to even see those plans for sale in the Auction House.  Hasn’t yet.

Anyway, this Draenei with those shoulders.  I look at the rest of his gear, and he’s a Shaman.  Huh?  He’s wearing Paladin/Warrior shoulders??  But no!  There’s a craftable (I guess) Mail version of the same dang shoulders.  Just crafted by Leatherworkers and not Blacksmiths.

Hey, hey.  Now we need several Clothie versions, crafted by Tailors, for the EXACT SAME SHOULDERS ONLY THE COLOR IS DIFFERENT.

C’mon.  It’s nice looking shoulder armor.  And I’m one for the aesthetics of things.  I’m also one for the suitablitity of the look for the environment.

It’s already bad enough that all Shamans at a particular raiding level wear identical gear.  (Except Enhancement and Resto that have their Tier set, and then have Hunter and Resto gear too.)  But, otherwise, everyone is wearing identical looking gear for their class, regardless of their spec, and regardless of their faction.  And the Arena sets are identical with the Tier sets.

Truly one of the biggest thrills of the days gone by was playing a class the other faction did not have.  When you saw a Shaman with those lightning rod shoulders from the first Elements set, you knew they were Horde.  That was Horde gear.  And that cool Paladin set, with the books on their shoulders?  Alliance.

When they showed us the first images of the Expansion, with the new races, and the Blood Elf Paladin in that Paladin gear, in that Alliance gear, it was all over.  No longer did the Factions have distinct looking gear.  (It was already bad enough that all Warriors got Valor gear, Horde and Alliance.  At least the PvP armors looked very faction specific.)

And at least the classes were going to continue to look different.  Right?

WRONG.  Those shoulders are proof that soon all players will look the same if Blizzard keeps up with their Retread policy.  Just colored different, but wearing the same armor on different frames.

I want Horde to have Horde only plans.  I want Amani Troll Shoulderguards to only be worn by Horde.  Preferably only worn by Trolls.  Those were the shoulders the Shamans could get out of the Arathi Basin.

Or is it too late.  Have the lunatics taken over the asylum and have far too many decisions been made leading us to a World of Warcraft that’s becoming a very indistinct muddle of everything?  We’re all going to be oatmeal, and we’ll all taste the same.  We’ll all have crowd control (because it sucks being the one class without any), we’ll all have ranged abilities (Hammer of Wrath and Avenger’s Shield anyone?), we’ll all look the same (Dawnsteel/Swiftsteel/Shoulders of Lightning Reflexes, so when’s the cloth version coming??).

Ya know, that’s one of the joys of playing the beginning levels.  You are fully in your story and in the lore.  (But, on the other hand, why are the spacefaring Draenei stumbling out of their spaceship escape pods with stone axes and clubs? And yet the Blood Elves are still crafting Sin’Dorei gear.  The level 5 vendor weapons look really cool.  Too bad it’ll all be replaced by level 20 with stone clubs from the Barrens.)

Anyway, where was I.  Please hire some more designers.  Or please put a stop to the flow of retreads.  Looking the same because there’s only 5 different armor shapes is the same as looking the same because there’s 100 different armors that have 5 different armors shapes.

And it’s why I still like my Pauldrons of Furious Elements from the vendor in Shattrath.  It’s got the Amani Trolls of Zul’Aman look, and it’s for Shamans.  And since most Alliance Shamans raid as Enhancement, and most Shamans raid as Restorations, I’m one of the few actually wearing those things.  And they remind me of the glory days, where a Shaman looked like a Shaman, and they looked Horde.